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Wearing red shirts, holding signs and handing out stickers that said "firing nurses isn’t groovy," seven Intensive Care Unit nurses alleging they were fired for speaking-up for quality patient care picketed for an hour in front of Valley Regional Medical Center in Brownsville on Tuesday.

They were joined by union members of the National Nurses Organizing Committee.

"When the hospital puts you to assume a charge nurse role, on top of the patient-ratio that you already have to take care of - those two critically ill patients - then you have an added responsibility to over see the whole unit," Cleo Vasquez, one of the fired nurses said.

Vasquez said when the "magnificent seven," as some are now calling the nurses, refused to accept that role in order to avoid jeopardizing patient safety - they were fired.

However, Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit Nurse Dotty Boling said taking the role of head nurse is nothing new. She's had her turn at the shift too.

"You deal with it,” Boling said. “You take the proper chain-of-command and that wasn't followed. That's why the nurses were fired - it really has nothing to do with patient safety. (It was) their turn to be in charge, and they refused, and that's not the way to handle things."

Boling has been at the hospital for seven years and recognizes that many hospitals are having staffing issues, but said if the nurses truly felt their patients' safety was in jeopardy, they had options.

"It's called Safe Harbor,” Boling said. “There's three forms, you fill them out that day - not that second but it has to be within the same day - and that's the process for dealing with an assignment you feel is unsafe.”

The seven nurses who find themselves without a job said they are hopeful that the hospital will soon side with them, re-hire them and consider their recommendations.

"Have a charge nurse who will not have a patient or have a charge nurse who will have one patient only," Vasquez said.

Boling thinks that's a long shot, but hopes for a quick resolution.

"I would really like the nurses’ union to go back to California where they started and allow myself, and my coworkers, and the rest of our hospital family to start trying to re-build what we had before they got here," Boling said.